In the jungle with Marcos.

Do you know where Reality is and how to get there? Fly to Tuxtla Gutierrez, capital of Chiapas, take a bus to San Cristobal de las Casas, an old colonial city an hour and a half and two mountains away. Go see the person who communicates with the Zapatistas and find out when and where your appointment is.

Early Sunday evening, the contact informs me that my filming date was two hours ago, but not to worry because if I arrive there tomorrow morning they will understand. Miraculously, my wife Rebecca and I find Carlos Martinez, a cameraman with camera, charged batteries, and tape, and I locate an open rental agency that has a front-wheel-drive VW Combi.

At 11:30 P.M. we put our heads on pillows. At 4:00 Monday morning, we depart, south to Comitan, about an hour-and-a-half drive on a pothole-filled, but nevertheless paved, road.

Head east twenty more miles to Las Margaritas and then continue on a rocky, unpaved road that begins to resemble a mountain trail. Enjoy magnificent scenery, occasional Indian villages, and periodic threats to your life as the vehicle skids down slippery mud slopes with nothing but 200 feet of space between you and the bottom of the canyon. On these steep roads, local people tote what look like 100-pound loads of firewood on their backs.

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After about three hours of robust kidney exercise, you arrive at the village of Guadalupe Tepeyac, a ghost town, the residents driven out by the Federales, the Mexican army, an occupation force. In the village, doctors and nurses sit outside a modern hospital bereft of patients. Armed soldiers amble along the muddy lanes between abandoned houses, and a few hookers sit on a rickety bench, waiting for the soldiers to finish their patrol.

On the way out of the village, we pass a military camp, whose entrance consists of a makeshift bamboo gate, in the opening of which stands a soldier snapping a photo of the side of the vehicle as it drives by. Ah, modern security procedures!

We continue east for another half an hour, sliding, literally, down the slippery slopes into Reality. In Spanish, Reality is La Realidad, the name of this village in the Lacondon jungle, in southeast Chiapas, Mexico, maybe fifteen miles north of the Guatemalan border, midway between Las Margaritas on the west and San Quintin on the east.

Yes, a wooden sign assures you, this is La Realidad. "Park your vehicle on the side of the road," says a short, dark-skinned man who approaches and asks you in unsyntactical Spanish to write down what you want and give him some I.D.

He turns out to be the elected village chief. Villagers call him Maxi, which I assume to be short for maximum jefe, but is actually an abbreviation for his name, Maximiliano.

I write down that I have a date with el sup.

He asks me if I have brought the newspapers or anything else. We had departed before the morning papers arrived, so I give him a book and some cigars for Comandante Moises, a gift from a friend of his in the city.

He nods, and tells us to park the vehicle in the smidgen of shade offered by a tree near the village classroom, next to the stream that runs through the village.

We wait throughout the morning as colorfully clad, barefooted women and teenage girls return from the mountains carrying formidable loads of wood on their backs, with a sling-like affair that reaches around the wood and across their foreheads to absorb and balance the weight. We watch from a crude bench outside the two-room school. The air hangs around us like a cartoon bubble that says "heat and humidity," as the foggy cool of early morning turns furnace-like and the sun burns away the mist. At about 11:00 A.M., a dozen lower-grade-school boys run out of the classrooms, doing somersaults.

Surrounding us, rising precipitously from the valley, green mountains stand like still-life paintings, tropical Vermeers, studded with fir trees, precious wood, banana stalks, and, hiding under them, the frail coffee trees--key to the village economy. The village is a pattern of thatched huts, divided by a rapidly running mountain stream, with women and girls washing corn, beans, clothes, and bodies, and little kids splashing and frolicking. Firewood is piled neatly in sheds outside the huts, and wisps of smoke curl from the kitchens. Dogs yap and roosters crow amidst a continual croaking and humming of frogs and bugs, with pigs snorting like bass players in this tropical orchestra of fauna.

Noontime comes and goes, and still no word from el sup. Maybe he's in the middle of writing one of his communiques for the internet, or meeting with the other comandantes about political strategy, or reading yesterday's La Jornada or this week's Proceso, Mexico's best and most progressive newspaper and magazine, respectively. Maybe he's in the middle of a hot poker game, or hunting an animal, or making love to his wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, or whomever. Am I feeling a bit frustrated?

The dense humidity begins to hang from everything, especially my clothes and hair. I slug my bottled water both to quench my thirst and temper my hunger pangs. Out of nowhere a buzzing black insect, an image from a Gameboy set, circles my head. I wait. It lands on my hand. I slap. Got it! Within seconds a large red spot appears with a black dot in the center. It itches. I resist scratching. It starts to burn. Yeah, I got it all right.

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At about 3:00 P.M., village men return from the milpa, the cornpatch. Banal hunger pangs are intruding on any lofty thoughts I might have. Carlos arranges with the village head to allow us to buy our meals at the house of Jorge's family for ten pesos a meal, about $1.50. By 4:00 we begin to think the sup has forgotten us, or the message didn't arrive, or he's at an all-day prayer meeting.

The hell with him, I say, let's eat. We wander across the so-called road to Jorge's house. His wife Gloria and his kids laugh as we arrive, place hunks of log or kiddie chairs outside the kitchen, plus a small bench, on which a teenage girl, dressed in what looks like her party clothes but which turns out to be a traditional women's costume, places a metal bowl of water--for us to wash our hands. She smiles as we fumble with the bowl and try to figure out where to wipe our wet hands. Her jet black hair is perfectly combed, adorned with a bow. She is seventeen, unmarried, one of Jorge and Gloria's eight children. Two others died shortly after birth.

Gloria has cooked us a veritable feast: tepid, flaky corn tortillas, and watery, over-salted beans with pieces of protein--insects and worms--floating in them. She brings a dish with salt, limes, and tiny chile peppers. I stuff some beans in my tortilla, jam two tiny peppers in, and take a bite. The hair on my ears liquefies, a dentist drills into a nerve on the roof of my mouth.

"We call them look-at-the-sky peppers," says the teenager. As my body temperature reestablishes its equilibrium, a small puppy approaches, an animal slightly larger than a mouse, with the pathetic look of a beagle mixed with a tortured rabbit. "She has no name," responds Gloria. I name her Giganta, the Saint Bernard of the Lacondon jungle.

After dinner, about 4:30, I wander over to the village basketball court--every village has one--and the guys invite me to play with them. I have never before, at five-seven and 155 pounds, been the tallest and heaviest player on the court. The netless hoops, one of which hangs at a forty-five-degree angle, present a challenge. A village ref whistles the violations, and we change sides after we score twenty points.

Our side wins, but I decline my right as member of the winning team to play in a second game and slosh my way off the court. My bloated feet, clad in hiking boots, throb explosively, my clothes cling like freshly glued wallpaper.

Then comes night, the young men still shooting hoops by the full moon, as a chill fills the air, chasing all but the most determined of people-chewing insects. Wearing sweat pants, sweat shirt, and a pair of cotton socks midway up my legs, drenching myself with insect repellent, I curl up in the rear bench of the VW Combi, Rebecca on the middle bench, leaving only a crack of window open--a mistake, as I discover the next morning.

Carlos, the jungle veteran, braces his hammock with mosquito netting inside the classroom. Roosters crow, frogs and insects chatter away, an occasional whinny comes from a horse, a snort from a pig--Reality's night-time band.

At about 3:30 Tuesday morning, I awake and notice that some women have begun their trek up the mountainside, others are washing baskets of grain in the nearby stream. I stare at the sky for a couple of hours, then at 5:30 put my boots over the throbbing, itching welts on my ankles and legs and limp toward the communal water tap to throw something cold and wet on my face.

The men begin to file toward the milpa, machetes well-filed, faces stoic. Like the women who awoke before them and began their labors two hours earlier, the village men have followed a work-life pattern for centuries. They have moved locations when the conquistadors and their descendants drove them into the jungle and obliged them to incorporate Catholicism into their own, far broader and more complex world view.

In La Realidad, some, mostly women, still speak in Tojolabal. The majority speak "Castilla," but haltingly, without evidence of developed vocabularies or syntax. They know what they have learned, however, from their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents: a culture of order, discipline, respect for nature and each other--and a democratic, albeit hierarchical, system of government, where the village meets in assembly to discuss each important decision. Then a pseudo-military command structure carries out the decisions.

This village is 100 percent Zapatista. In October, elected delegates of Mexico's Congress, along with Bishop Samuel Ruiz and other dignitaries, met here with Zapatista leaders. Many residents of La Realidad prepared for the meetings by slipping bandanas over their mouths and noses and hoisting sticks on their shoulders, simulating rifles--the Zapatista symbol. The mask identifies the Mayan as a member of the EZLN. He or she takes off the bandana or ski mask to hide--just another villager who fetches wood, washes corn, and hacks the weeds from the milpa.

Driven to the inhospitable terrain by progress, cattle ranchers, timber barons, and coffee-estate owners, by hydroelectric projects and oil drilling, by corrupt and venal political bosses who fostered division inside the Indian communities, by the laws of capital as they have operated for five centuries, these people now face the ultimate threat of annihilation thanks to NAFTA, a subject I was eager to discuss with the sup, if he ever showed up.

I wander with the crew over to Jorge's kitchen where the fire is well-stoked, the beans are bubbling, and I pray the coffee water was boiled. Same people, same logs, same pathetic dog, same meal--except this time there's burned egg thrown on top of the beans, and the chiles are green, not red, and burn the roof of my mouth only 85 percent as much as the scarlet killers did.

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After breakfast I send another note to el sup, short of begging, just a polite reminder that we're waiting. We watch the thin, white cover of mist burn away and the jungle sun hurling its daily challenge to the human body.

Antonio, another visitor in waiting, shows us where we can dip our itching, throbbing, sweating bodies into the cool stream. We trudge a quarter of a mile on a mud path and immerse hot flesh in cool mountain water. It is 11:50 A.M. Women begin to descend from the mountain with their woodpiles. We watch grass, insects, and kids running out of school.

Noon comes and goes. What's time mean when there's no phone to ring, no fax to send? Even cellulars don't function out here. Time in Reality is carried by wind and depends on the speed of the wind on any given day.

Today, the air hangs in place, waiting alongside me in a war of attrition. When hunger pangs develop, I suck on a grapefruit and feel that recurring sensation of worry vibrations tugging at my liver. Could the Zapatista poker game last for more than two days?

At 3:30 in the afternoon, I force myself into conversation with an eleven-year-old kid who wants to know how much a VW Combi costs and what renting a car means.

Then a young man, wearing blue overalls, strides purposefully toward us. He asks me if I'm the periodista. I nod. He tells us where to be--a ten-minute walk--at 4:00. We spring into action, camera, tapes, still camera, film, notebook, notes for questions, adrenalin flowing.

At 4:05 two men wearing ski masks and carrying semiautomatic weapons walk into sight. One of them smokes a pipe. "Buenas trades," he says, shaking my hand, smiling through his mud-colored ski mask. He carries a pipe in one hand and a submachine gun in the other. His bodyguard brings two benches for us to sit on and we begin our conversation, which would last until it got dark and then continue the next day.

I finally have my meeting with el sup, Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, Zapatista leader, poet, communicator extraordinaire, from the jungles of Chiapas. We had only an hour of daylight, so we got right into the interview.

I ask Marcos about his thinking at the time of the rebellion, January 1, 1994. He responds in Spanish. "We think that when the uprising took place on the first of January, the globalization process, which coincided with Mexico's formal incorporation into NAFTA, meant the sacrifice of a part of humanity. In our case, it meant the sacrifice of the indigenous, of all the indigenous Mexicans but particularly the indigenous Chiapans," he tells me. "What neoliberalism has done--the process of world globalization in NAFTA--is to eliminate a part of this population, annihilating them, forgetting them, wiping them from the face of the Earth.

"So, this is what we're looking at when we say, `Enough already.' Our revolution is a revolution of words, to say, `Here we are.' Our unique way to make this country and this world remember us, paradoxically, is by hiding ourselves. In order to show who we are, we hide, by wearing ski masks, inside a clandestine organization, using this ambiguous method to tell the country, `Here we are, we are many, we are millions, and this country is forgetting about us.'

"This cry begets not so much sympathy, as empathy. We get on the same wavelength as peasant movements from other parts of the world, and with ethnic minorities from other parts of the world. In this sense, without explicitly proposing it, the Zapatista Army's message is converted to a world message in that the oblivion suffered by the indigenous Chiapans is the same suffered by indigenous or ethnic groups in other parts of the world.

"In one way or another, it's a warning to this globalization process and to the entire world: You cannot forget a part of yourself in each project you make. The project of the future, no matter how modern, has to incorporate its past, has to incorporate its history, and that he who forgets his history has to pay for it like the neoliberal regimes in Mexico are paying now."

I ask el sup about the social conditions of the Chiapans prior to the rebellion.

"The Indian wasn't just the citizen relegated to the lowest level. Rather, the indigenous Mexican was even lower still. He was sub-human, not even enjoying the possibility of the cellar. In the case of the indigenous, they don't even have the possibility of beginning to climb the educational staircase, which was the social ladder. They can't even climb the ladder of life. There isn't a family that hasn't lost a quarter or more of its children. Dead in the period from birth to age five.

"This is the social-ideological basis that makes possible, on the first of January, 1994, this absurd war by an army of thousands of indigenous people, poorly armed, badly trained, ill-disciplined, malnourished, poorly equipped, which decides to challenge a powerful army, a government at the height of its world renown, the government of Salinas de Gortari, and to challenge the entire world in the same way. They challenged neoliberalism, in this case the Free Trade Treaty, with a wooden stick disguised as a gun.

"Only a life-or-death perspective could take the indigenous groups to such a radical step--armed insurrection. Maybe if the indigenous people only lacked expectations for educational achievement, or recognized that their social conditions wouldn't allow them to improve their lives, probably the indigenous movement would have opted for other means, but they didn't have another possibility. Before the uprising, they only had the possibility of not living--of dying and dying needlessly.

"The racism used against the indigenous Chiapans is very similar to apartheid in South Africa. It's just less acknowledged here. Until 1993 a chicken, a hen, was worth more than the life of an indigenous person. Until not long ago, the indigenous in San Cristobal de las Casas couldn't walk on the sidewalk; they had to walk in the street, and they were scorned. They were despised simply because they looked Indian. Anybody not able to speak proper Spanish--meaning able to get proper schooling, besides being dark-skinned, short-statured, and dressed in a particular way--couldn't go into certain places.

"They were treated like animals. And according to what the landowners say, not even like an animal because an animal is worth more. In this sense the death of an indigenous person didn't even count. If your mule died, you'd acknowledge it. You had a mule and now you don't. The Indians died and no one noticed.

"This is the history of the indigenous in Mexico. They've never been taken into account. On the scale of values in modern Mexico, indigenous people rate zero, lower even than an animal."

At this point, a military spotter plane dives toward us, possibly drawn by the sun reflector we're using.

"Smile," Marcos says, and reminds us that the plane has a camera. Marcos, his bodyguard, and our camera crew move under the eaves of a nearby building. When the plane flies out of sight, we resume.

I ask whether the indigenous can maintain their identity without having land.

"No, the concept of land for indigenous people goes beyond what the land produces, or even gives life itself. It's not the same relationship as it is with a peasant, although his relationship with the land is very similar, in that it gives him a livelihood, roots, a goal in life. For the Indian, it's also his link with history. I'm not referring to only the land he works but also the land where he lives, his community and his mountains, his rivers. It is the reference to his historic past that is not limited to something that has already passed, but it is something that is still happening."

Then I ask him about his view of President Clinton and U.S. policy toward Mexico. He answers now in broken and accented English.

"When Clinton supports the Mexican government, Zedillo's government, the U.S. government is supporting its own future problems, because the lack of democracy in Mexico means lack of justice and liberty. This increases the Mexican people's sense of instability, anxiety, and then they must go to another land to find the things they cannot find in their own land.

"I mean, when Mr. Clinton supports the facade of democracy in Mexico, he is supporting the growth of immigration to the United States from Mexico, because a lot of people will go to cross the border because there is no democracy here, no liberty, no justice. The Mexican government doesn't do anything to resolve these problems, only increases repression, the military, and police force. The military and police are corrupted by the drug traffic, and the U.S. government knows it.

"What we want in Mexico is democracy, liberty, and justice. The United States can deal with Mexico about immigration, drugs, and crime better by supporting the effort of Mexican people for democracy. A better border wall between Mexico and the United States is one constructed by democracy, liberty, and justice. We are not looking to threaten or embarrass the United States. We are looking to save our country and tell our story.

"The problem is that the U.S. government has forgotten the story of Mexico, and this is a mistake that all the American people will pay for. When the government of the United States makes a foreign-policy mistake, the government doesn't pay the debt; the debt is paid by the American people.

"Each year immigration grows, and each year U.S. taxpayers pay more to solve this problem. But this problem doesn't get solved, because the problem is not in the United States, or on the U.S.-Mexican border. The problem is in Mexico. And the American people's effort to try to solve this should be directed to help the Mexican people, not to help the Mexican government.

"When the American government gives money to the Mexican government, that money doesn't go to the Mexican people; it stays in the Mexican government. So poverty remains, and grows and grows and grows."

I wonder whether the Zapatistas represent a threat to the United States.

"Even in spite of our guns, we are not a threat to the United States, not even a threat to the Mexican government. Our guns are only a way of saying, `Hey, here we are! Remember us? Don't forget us.'

"We are not terrorists. We don't have nuclear bombs. We only have the truth of our words, and we are making one prophecy to you, the American people: Your future problems are in Mexico, and to solve these problems, you must help the Mexican people. I repeat, not the Mexican government but the Mexican people."

Another plane dives down. The sun has dipped behind the Blue Mountain, the wildest part of the jungle, el sup informs us. We turn the camera off. He goes back to Spanish.

"We'll finish tomorrow," he says, shaking hands, "between 9:00 and 10:00." He and his bodyguard turn and begin their trek from Reality to their camp. We return to our vehicle, store the camera and tapes, and make our way to Jorge's hut for our second meal of the day.

I cannot see by the light of the candles inside the kitchen what else but beans is floating in the beans. A burned scrambled egg soaked in lemon juice, salt, and a hot pepper wrapped in a flaky tortilla placate my hunger.

I dip the dry cornmeal cake into the bean juice, hoping not to pick up any cling-ons. I drink the lukewarm, overly sweet coffee, tell the senora how wonderful everything is, and listen to the others talk about Reality.

Just as Marcos said, each family seems to have lost its share of kids, mostly between birth and five years old: fever, cough, diarrhea. With limited vocabulary and poor syntax in Spanish, the villagers nevertheless talk politics. They understand that former President Salinas's revision of Article 27 of the Constitution removed protection from their land--their life, their identity, their future. Under the revised law, there will be no land for their children and their grandchildren.

It is hardly a secret that this village is Zapatista territory. The army sends regular motorized convoys through La Realidad several times a week. Low-flying military planes and helicopters remind the villagers: "We're watching you."

Another cool night, but not cool enough to inhibit the ticks that crawl under my socks and sweat pants to gnaw at my flesh.

At 4:30 A.M., a horn blows, and I incorporate Yom Kippur into my dream, but when I sit up I hear the sound again. The women have already begun to do their chores. And at 6:00 more than 100 men appear, with machetes, and begin a collective lawn-mowing on all the village greenery. They finish within an hour.

Soon after, the ram's horn, called el cacho, sounds again, and I ask the horn-blower if he could repeat the blow so we can film him. He says we must ask permission. I ask Maxi. No, says the head man, the horn blowing calls the assembly; it's not for filming.

By noon, Marcos's advance man shows up and we complete the interview.

I ask him about his reputation as a "post-modern" revolutionary, one who uses drama and a sense of humor--something notably absent in other revolutionary movements.

"Believe me, the only way to survive here in the Lacondon jungle is to laugh. You have to have a well-developed sense of humor or be completely nuts. Or maybe in our case, both of those things. What we tried to do was to be spontaneous, that is to say, don't reflect too much, don't predict things, and that is what I think has given coherence to what we can do."

I ask him whether it's difficult to have a personal life as a guerrilla, or whether he's turned into a different person.

"I've turned into three people. There are three Marcoses. Marcos of the past who has a past, the Marcos of the mountains before the first of January, and post January 1 Marcos. Of those, the most important one is the Marcos who is the product of all the others up to now. It is the Marcos of after the first of January.

"That's why people say it doesn't matter who Marcos is: Marcos is a symbol, he means something we have constructed. And that's the truth. In reality, the Marcos everyone knows, the Marcos of the ski mask, is someone in turn constructed from this ski mask, and who reflects a mountain of aspirations, and who has nothing to do with the person that is behind the ski mask.

"But someone is behind the ski mask," he laughs, "and that's the truth, and that Marcos is the one who spent twelve years in the mountains before the first of January, who was born out of the corpse of the civilian Marcos."

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I mention that Castro once said there is no life that requires greater sacrifice than guerrilla life.

"It was a very tough time. Really very difficult, I don't know how to measure deprivation because seeing the indigenous conditions I would say that if anyone lives worse than guerrillas it is the indigenous people here.

"But it was a very difficult situation especially for someone from the city. The only thing that allowed you to survive was the hope that something would come from everything we were doing. It was an irrational expectation, totally loony, because there was nothing, absolutely nothing that would validate what you were doing--not world news, nor national news, nor anything.

"We are talking about a group of four, five, six people in the mid-1980s, and we kept repeating to ourselves all day, all night, `We are good. This was what we had to do.' But there was nothing outside of that to confirm that what you were doing made sense.

"Moreover, the mountain was rejecting you. The mountain made you hungry, sick. It pushed rain and cold on you. The aggression of animals, insects, all this was saying, `Go, go, you have no business here.'

"And the entire world was telling you the same thing. The socialist camp was collapsing, the armed struggle route was completely abandoned, and you were like some nut clinging to a dream, dreaming because that was the truth.

"You were dreaming that what you were doing was going to be good for something, and we didn't have ambitious dreams. Don't think that we were fantasizing about seizing power and then becoming a great president or emulating a Castro or a Lenin or whatever. We were thinking that at least we were going to help the indigenous people transform their lives in a radical and irreversible way so that the past would not return."

He poses for photos with my wife and me. I ask him what size boots he wears, noticing that his are shredded. He says, "Forget it. I have a sentimental attachment to these."

We depart from Reality in late afternoon. I feel mixed emotions. The forty-three red welts and bumps, some with stingers left in them, will remain for only about three weeks, but the other memories will stick.

The road has suffered more rain, thus more dangerous, slippery mud. Carlos navigates the Combi, whose steering grows increasingly unresponsive, through perilous pits and caverns. Then, just after we drive through the ghost village of Guadalupe Tepeyac, we meet a road-fixing project--dump trucks loaded with dirt, and a giant bulldozer. The army, after all, like the Pony Express, has to get through.

A dump truck in front of us tries to turn around and backs its rear wheels into a ditch. He now blocks the entire, narrow road. The driver then tries to jump out by putting the vehicle in low and revving the accelerator. Because of all the weight in the back, he breaks the axle. Behind us is a truckload of village men, presumably Zapatistas, then another dump truck, then an army vehicle with a platoon of soldiers.

I contemplate a variety of scenarios that range from armed confrontation between the soldiers and Zapatistas behind us, to slow death by starvation. The soldiers and Zapatistas avert their eyes when the patrol walks by. I note how much alike are their young, indigenous faces. Then, the bulldozer operator goes into motion, miraculously turns the dump truck and points it downhill, and pushes it into a shoulder just wide enough for us to pass.

On the road, we film an Indian girl, who appears to be no more than twelve, carrying load of wood that a lumberjack would find difficult to hoist. Indian girls just like her have been carrying loads of wood for centuries.

They and their ancestors have survived this way for over a millennium. Now they face extinction, by what the sup calls neoliberalism.

"Hey," he urges. "Don't forget about us!"